He wants us to learn from his book (as early as possible) what he finally learned late in life. Solomon doesn’t intend to merely express gloom. Most people are trying to get what they really need from “under the sun” instead of from the Maker of the Sun! What does all this mean? “Under the sun” there is no answer, no ultimate fulfillment, no meaning. In the natural world, there is a cycle that is simply repeated over and over, taking the objective observer to the conclusion, “there is nothing new under the sun.”. So, any search for real meaning and lasting profit cannot come from under the sun.Įxamples are given from nature (sun, wind and water). In fact, history repeats itself and no great thing emerges from “under the sun” that changes the essence of our existence here. Nothing ever really changes except for the faces, the names, the methods and perhaps the social/political dynamics. If, therefore, we root our hope in the next generation or time, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. “A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.” There is a transience about human existence on earth, that really fails to bring us in touch with something that is absolutely new. This is a poetic expression that says, for all of man’s efforts against the reality of God, he gains nothing earthly activities are repetitive and unfulfilling. In the above section, there is really a simple thought reported by the writer: When life here on earth is lived without God, it is really soon to become very boring. No matter how exciting life may seem to be “under the sun,” ultimately, it has no value without God. Reading and navigating Ecclesiastes can be confusing and perplexing, if we neglect this simple working premise: Solomon is dramatically describing life here on earth, and the folly of that existence when God is left out. Of later things yet to be among those who come after. There is no remembrance of former things, Indeed, throughout Ecclesiastes the Preacher’s advice might be aligned (tentatively) with Stoicism and Epicureanism: try to accept what you cannot change and control your response to things which should make you angry or unhappy, and strive to attain a moderate amount of pleasure from the simple things life affords you in the present moment.Īlthough the author of Ecclesiastes makes reference to God and the importance of belief, it’s unusual for the tone of scepticism which pervades it: ‘vanity of vanities’, everything is ‘vanity’, pointless and ultimately meaningless, and happiness, whilst worth striving for, is evanescent and difficult to attain.A generation goes, and a generation comes,Īnd what has been done is what will be done, Man weaves his petty cells, spawning the generation that will succeed him, and that is all that will last of him. As Isaac Asimov points out in his brilliant Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: The Old Testament by Isaac Asimov (September 19,1973), it might be more accurate to paraphrase the meaning of ‘Vanity of vanities’ as ‘All is nothing … nothing means anything.’ The key point, then, is that although it sounds like ‘Vanity of vanities … all is vanity’ is calling out the conceited self-indulgence of humankind, this is only because of the baggage that our English word vanity brings with it. And the formation ‘X of Xs’ is a peculiarly Hebrew idiom denoting a maximum: compare, in this connection, ‘King of Kings’ or, indeed, ‘Song of Songs’, another name for the Song of Solomon (Ecclesiastes, like the Song of Songs, is attributed to Solomon, the ‘son of David’, even though both were written some time after the time of Solomon). ‘Vanity’, indeed, means ‘emptiness’: it’s from the Latin word vanus denoting a state of emptiness. Smoke, vapour, vanity … they are all an attempt to grasp the (suitably elusive) meaning of the original Hebrew, but they all capture something of the original’s emphasis on emptiness.
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